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Shouldn’t America Practice Separation of Mosque and State As Well?

by lewwaters

Without a doubt, the United States of America is the greatest experiment in freedom and liberty in all of mankind’s history on this planet. Our ancestors migrated to this ‘New World’ centuries ago in large part to escape religious persecution and have the freedom to exercise, or not exercise the religion of their choice, without fear of repercussion from the state for deviating from a “State Religion.”

Nowhere has this concept been shown better than after gaining our Independence from Britain’s King George and putting a constitution in place, our founding fathers wrote in the very first of our 10 Bill of Rights, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…” Placed before all other rights, our freedom to practice the religion of our choice, unhampered by the state was established.

For most of our history, Christianity, in all of its various factions was the predominant religion, alongside Judaism, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and others to much smaller degrees. Still, everybody practiced freely with few if any problems. Communities held Christian ceremonies and holidays while showing honor and respect to the smaller religions when they held their holidays and ceremonies.

Many of my teachers when growing up were Jewish who all received days off to recognize their holidays. We recited the Lord’s Prayer every morning until the early 1960’s when an atheist woman successfully had prayers in school banned nationwide, citing “separation of church and state,” a concept not recognized in our country until a 1947 Supreme Court Ruling in Everson v. Board of Education that relied on a few words contained in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists stating, “… I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

Since then, we have seen a very gradual expansion of just what is said to be religious expression in government. Prayers once common in school were banned. Displays of the 10 Commandments were demanded removed from court houses and judges courts. Christmas Nativity scenes banned from display in government buildings and public parks unless all other religions holy days were equally displayed. Veterans Memorials containing a cross torn down or lawsuits filed to have them torn down. Military Chaplains cautioned on sermons concerning Jesus. It’s almost as if Christianity, still the majority religion in the country has been consigned to the dark back corners of a closet, ridiculed and banned all over.

Judaism, while more tolerated has seen a rise in anti-Semitism, especially as Palestinian groups continue to launch wave after wave of propaganda concerning Israel, expressed in the Charter of Hamas as, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” Subsequent claims of no longer holding that view are specious at best and not to be trusted as Hamas continues to launch rocket attacks into Israel from Gaza nearly every day.

Although that concept of a “wall of separation between church and state” remains firmly entrenched, meaning to me that religion is not to hold influence in government; Islam appears to gaining influence in government.

While Christianity is all but kept out of schools, efforts in our state to include Islamic studies in public schools is sparking outrage.

Iranian born Gubernatorial candidate Shahram Hadian, a former Muslim who founded the TIL Project to expose creeping influence of Islamic religion into government with hopes of imposing oppressive Sharia law, denounced efforts by The Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) to grant special accommodations for Muslim students that are not granted Christian students in school.

In September 2010, the Texas State Board of Education “approved a one-page nonbinding resolution urging textbook publishers to limit what they print about Islam in world history books, by a 7-5 vote,” in hopes of curtailing what they viewed as “a creeping Middle Eastern influence in the nation’s publishing industry.”

A Massachusetts school district ended up having to issue and apology to parents of sixth graders for a September 2010 “field trip” to a nearby Mosque where the children did not just observe Muslim services, but were “separated by gender and the boys were asked to join the Muslim adults in their prayer.”

While there, a spokeswoman for the mosque was videotaped telling students, “You have to believe in Allah, and Allah is the one God, the only one worthy of worship, all forgiving, all merciful.”

Can you imagine how fast the ACLU would file a lawsuit against any school district who took 6th graders to a Cathedral or Synagogue where they were instructed as they were in the Mosque or urged to participate in religious services?

More recently, a young Christian student in Grand Junction, Colorado drew attention for quitting a school choir after he was supposed to sing a song “composed in the style of Islamic prayer chants.” Efforts to remove the song from the program were rebuked by the Choir leader and others within the school system with the claim of “bringing diversity to the students and showing them other things that are out there.” This, as we see increased pressure for traditional Christmas music not to be played around Christmas time.

Days ago we see Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs blog in an effort to counter an anti-Catholic ad ran in the New York Times that urged Catholics to abandon their religion over their refusal to abandon a basic tenet of their religion by Barack Obama, rebuked by the New York Times who won’t run her identical ad urging Muslims to come out of Islam.

I first broached this notion of “Separation of Mosque and State” back in July 2007 in my earlier days of blogging where I posted then condemnations of all prayers in schools by atheist groups who strangely enough, remained silent on several inclusions and accommodations to Islam back then.

Do you think the ACLU would tolerate a Judge ruling it was proper for courts to settle cases based on Biblical scripture?

More and more every day we see this concept of no religious influence in government chipped away as under the cry of “diversity,” Islam is allowed publicly where Christianity is not.

I’m not a particularly religious person, but if we are to truly honor the spirit Separation of Church and State, keeping religious influence out of government and schools, then we must also begin imposing a “Wall of Separation Between Mosque and State as well.”

If not, our offspring just may end up with a State Religion, something our founders abhorred.

12 Comments to “Shouldn’t America Practice Separation of Mosque and State As Well?”

A large part of the problem seems to be that certain individuals in authority have trouble observing a bright-line distinction between educating students about other religions, and indoctrinating or converting them. I don’t see a problem with, for example, offering an elective comparative religion class to students, but what you’re describing goes way beyond that.

If the schools can’t figure out how to maintain the distinction between education and indoctrination, banning all of it, including Muslim expressions and practices, seems like the only reasonable alternative.

Shahram Hadian made a point in November, when he spoke before We The People, of a World History text book used in the Lacey School district where a Dad, whose son was coming home daily speaking positively towards Islam and how he had a lot of trouble getting to see the test book the school was using. After threats of a lawsuit, he obtained the book.

It had 3 or 4 pages on the history of Christianity, mostly the crusades, nothing on Judaism, 1 or 2 pages on Hinduism and Buddhism and 7 chapters on Islam.

That is not teaching the world history of religion, it is indoctrinating Islam.

The Muslim crap is being “introduced” to our children in the same way the Queers are attempting to indoctrinate and recruit our children – in the schools. It’s obvious that schools today are nothing more than “indoctrination centers” for deviant BS “favored” by Leftist pukes.

Of course America should practice the separation of Mosque and State. The wall of separation Jefferson referred to related to all religions—that would include Islam. The reality is that because the State controls education the State cannot remove itself from the arena of religious influence.

Most social, cultural and political movements have been in result of, or in response to, some religious activity or motivation. Thus the teaching of history at almost any level is subject to religious interpretation and revisionist tinkering by those with an agenda to promote a particular worldview.

The fields of science lost their innocence and became politicized when evolution was forced into the curriculum to the exclusion of any other explanation of Origins. Math is probably the only subject of study which can be taught totally devoid of religious consideration.

To separate religion from state would require a separation of school and state. Not something the teachers unions want to happen. And not something that many conservatives understand the need for. So it is not something that is likely to happen soon.

In the meantime, education will continue to be molded to serve whatever is defined as ‘politically-correct’ by whomever controls the state. Those out of power can only try to keep the abuse to a minimum until they can regain the harnesses of power. The task then will be to keep the new regime from engaging in the same abuses. And therein lies the responsibility of we the people.

Separation of church and state is a bedrock principle of our Constitution much like the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances. In the Constitution, the founders did not simply say in so many words that there should be separation of powers and checks and balances; rather, they actually separated the powers of government among three branches and established checks and balances. Similarly, they did not merely say there should be separation of church and state; rather, they actually separated them by (1) establishing a secular government on the power of “We the people” (not a deity), (2) saying nothing to connect that government to god(s) or religion, (3) saying nothing to give that government power over matters of god(s) or religion, and (4), indeed, saying nothing substantive about god(s) or religion at all except in a provision precluding any religious test for public office. Given the norms of the day, the founders’ avoidance of any expression in the Constitution suggesting that the government is somehow based on any religious belief was quite a remarkable and plainly intentional choice. They later buttressed this separation of government and religion with the First Amendment, which constrains the government from undertaking to establish religion or prohibit individuals from freely exercising their religions. The basic principle, thus, rests on much more than just the First Amendment.

It is important to distinguish between the “public square” and “government” and between “individual” and “government” speech about religion. The constitutional principle of separation of church and state does not purge religion from the public square–far from it. Indeed, the First Amendment’s “free exercise” clause assures that each individual is free to exercise and express his or her religious views–publicly as well as privately. The Amendment constrains only the government not to promote or otherwise take steps toward establishment of religion. As government can only act through the individuals comprising its ranks, when those individuals are performing their official duties (e.g., public school teachers instructing students in class), they effectively are the government and thus should conduct themselves in accordance with the First Amendment’s constraints on government. When acting in their individual capacities, they are free to exercise their religions as they please. If their right to free exercise of religion extended even to their discharge of their official responsibilities, however, the First Amendment constraints on government establishment of religion would be eviscerated. While figuring out whether someone is speaking for the government in any particular circumstance may sometimes be difficult, making the distinction is critical. (Students, too, can pray in school, as long as they do so in a time, manner, and place that does not disrupt school activities.)

Christians have always been and today remain the dominant religious influence in society and politics in the United States. While I have no doubt that Christians can be counted among those who have been the victims of ill treatment now and then, complaints of widespread discrimination against Christians bring to mind the image of a privileged child accustomed to getting his way who, faced with the prospect of treatment akin to that experienced by others, howls in pained anguish at the injustice of it all and pines for the good old days.

As for the impression that Muslims are allowed more freedom to pray during work and school, there are at least two answers. First, they have no more freedom than Christians in this regard. Second, under various statutes, employers are obligated to make “reasonable accommodations” for the religious practices of employees. Because certain daily rituals are integral to Islam and differ from the routine practices of Christians, accommodations of those rituals may stand out more to you.

As an atheist, I know how it feels to hold views not shared and even reviled by many in the dominant religion of our society. You may understand then how alarming it is to hear members of that dominant group speak of their sense of persecution. History often reveals dominant groups working themselves into a lather about perceived wrongs against them before they lash out to “restore” matters as they see fit.

Wake Forest University has published a short, objective Q&A primer on the current law of separation of church and state–as applied by the courts rather than as caricatured in the blogosphere. I commend it to you. http://tiny.cc/6nnnx

No blinders here. I well recognize the violence and threats of violence arising from some purporting to act in the name of Islam. I see, too, the effects of the intimidation understandably felt by those involved in actions that may be upsetting to Muslims. Witness the New York Times declining to publish an advertisement calling on Muslims to leave their faith (intended as a counterpoint to one calling on Catholics to leave theirs, which the Times had earlier published), citing concerns for the safety of troops in Afghanistan. Hardly even handed or fair, but still understandable, since the threats of violence are real and credible.

That said, simple everyday accommodation of Muslim practices in workplaces and schools hardly amounts to favoritism or discrimination against Christians.

Please read again. This is not addressing private workplaces, but public schools where Christian Prayer was banned, where students have been castigated for having a Bible and where the Christian God tossed out.

As I said, 7 chapters on Islam in a text book compared to 3 pages on Christianity is not equal.

A judge recently ruled Sharia can be used settling court cases. Sharia has no basis in our laws nor is it compatible with our constitution.

You excuse Pam’s ad being rejected due to “threats of violence.” Would you be so understanding if Christian Churches threatened violence on a similar scale? Or would you denounce it?

Ever so slowly, it is creeping in. Europe woke up recently and is working to counter it. We seem more intent to encourage it.

That “white guilt,” so-called “diversity,” or Political Correctness could allow our schools or courts to promulgate religious extremist agendas is anathema to me, as it should be to any American. And Yes, that includes the (I suspect relatively small number) Christian and Jewish extremists as well.

@Jack- Your Quote-
“The Muslim crap is being “introduced” to our children in the same way the Queers are attempting to indoctrinate and recruit our children – in the schools. It’s obvious that schools today are nothing more than “indoctrination centers” for deviant BS “favored” by Leftist pukes.

Time to do something about the schools.”

What evidence do you have that “queers” are indoctrinating and recruiting children? And what are they attempting to recruit them for?

@Doug- right on dude, well said.

@Lew- I for one do not want any religion having any measure of control over our government. If incidents come up, as you mentioned, they should be dealt with in the same manner as if it were any of the hundreds of religions out there. You did not cite any sources, so it is hard for me to verify the specific incidents you mentioned but if they are legit, than I would say they should be exposed and prevented in the future. I think that there is a current fear of Muslim’s taking over the country and changing ours laws by popular vote…I think it is also unfounded. While some Muslims may hold that view, there are plenty of Christians that want our government to be controlled by Christianity and they actually have a much better chance of imposing their views. The Muslim population will grow in our nation but our constitution has prevented the right wing Christian nuts from taking complete control and it will prevent the same with the Muslims.